


Where We Are Free

by goldenslumber



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Refuge, Safe Haven
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-23
Updated: 2012-12-23
Packaged: 2017-11-22 04:21:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/605765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldenslumber/pseuds/goldenslumber
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jaime and Brienne have been on the run, hiding out for some time. They find safety at an abandoned stable. One day Jaime finds himself giddy at the prospect of a simple, domestic life with his wench. No politics, backstabbing, manipulations or oaths.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where We Are Free

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Comment Fic-a-thon for Jaime-Brienne online. Enjoy.

Everything  _aches_. Brienne thought she'd dulled herself to the regulatory pains of life, after year upon year in the practice yard, working until her hands were bleeding and her skin resembled a dropped and abused apple. These are different discomforts; things that she's not prepared herself for, despite how often she'd heard from other women the difficulties of pregnancy – if fact, they'd left it out entirely, and what they did mention was unimaginable pain at the time of birth. Which only coaxed terror out of her, thinking that if she's uncomfortable now, seven months along, trudging along a muddy road, what is she going to do once that fateful day is upon her?  
  
She doesn't think about it. Instead, she rears her horse's reins and nudges her boots deep into the mare's pale flanks. Timidly, the horse picks up its pace, and Brienne suppresses a wince that flits across her face, a sharp, real pain flinging itself up and through her groin. “Keep up, Pod. I don't want you out of sight.”  
  
“Yes, Ser. My Lady.”  
  
Sprawled out ahead of them is an unfamiliar forest, though in some sense she knows it – a tree, on the left, it resembles vaguely the ridges of a rock she'd once seen off the shore of Tarth, and there, across the road, lays that tangled net of tree roots, thick and covered in the morning frost's beard. Flurries of white fall on her hair and her gloved hands. The parched, red knuckles clench every time the horse's stride falters in the knee deep snow drifts and Brienne is forced to straighten – she is used to hunching in the saddle, thick shoulders hooked inward, protectively, and it makes her feel bare, to be so rigid and thrusting her bulging stomach out, and up, away from the horse's warm flanks. Anyone can shoot an arrow and aim it at her abdomen; there's only a thick, coarse layer of wool wrapped around the round belly. No armor fits, none that she comes across these days, and if ever there was a portly enough knight with armor made to fit around her ungainliness, then the winter has surely sapped that away, or war has sent him into an early grave.  
  
She can still wear her gauntlets, though, and her helm. The sword belt digs into her hip bones, but that's okay, any protection the sword sheathed inside provides outweighs that pinch. All her mismatched pieces of armor, around her legs and her arms, that end near the shoulders and collarbones, only to be replaced by a strangely placed and laced piece of brown fabric, tucked around her suddenly apparent breasts, and swathed against her bulge – well, she's always felt quite like a spectacle for others, but like this, she's especially an uncertain sight for the eyes. Not that there are people to see. Travelers are rare this far north, and even rarer, someone who would dare approach a mounted and armed stranger.  
  
With everyday that passes, the area grows sparser of common folk. More snow falls, and the heavier she grows. Brienne is hard pressed to find anything to hunt for. Dawn is harder to face, bitter and icy, and the further the ride is in search of a stray doe or outcast, starved wolf. Podrick is her speed, since she's lost that advantage, but she's still got a steady hand and a long reach. If only her damned ankles would stop  _aching_.   
  
Her spine is throbbing, from sitting so poised, for so long, and she's long forgotten she has toes or a nose or even ears, pinched. But she instantly perks – maybe not outwardly, but inwardly, she heaves a sigh of.. something. Relief? Content? Excitement, sifted with anxiety and a strange shyness? She can't place a finger on it. Only that she spots the figure of a man silhouetted in the threshold of an old, wilted stable, arms crossed over his chest, easy smile on face, and she feels a sudden urge to shrink in her saddle, cover her stomach and pull down the visor of her helm.  
  
Brienne shakes the want and draws in a breath; the air stings her throat and lungs, leaving in a puff of white. Podrick trots to her side, dismounts in one leap – he's grown, he's taller, a little wider in the shoulders, a shadow of a beard on his jaw, but there is still, reassuringly, the ever present downcast eyes – and offers her his hand in aid down. She dislikes accepting the help, but she knows she may as well end up with an ankle tangled in the saddle or face down in the mud by one slip, so she grasps the boy's hand and is surprised by the steadiness behind it – coming from a boy that stutters so much.  
  
Jaime approaches, strutting across the yard. “Shoot that all by yourself, did you, wench?” he asks, indicating with a sweep of his stump toward the slumped shape of an animal carcass tied onto the back of Podrick's horse.  
  
“I tracked it,” Brienne admits bluntly. “Pod took it down.”  
  
Jaime directed a brief twist of his mouth toward the boy. “Slayed the mighty beast?”  
  
Pod shrugged slowly. “Wasn't hard, Ser.”  
  
“No, I expect not.” Jaime eyed the animal, noting all the poaches of meat he'd later carve off it, and then notes, with a touch of a frown, that it was only just a fawn, barely lost its spots. Odd, so late in the seasons. He turns toward Brienne, watching her as she unsaddles her horse in swift, determined moments, lips pressed into a hard line. She will not look at him; he expects that – she probably knows he knows.  
  
“We're going to have to eat the horses. Sometime. We're running out of grain to feed them,” he says, measurably, stroking his left hand over his own shadow. Brienne nods curtly. “Their meat's tough, and not so appetizing, but it'll get us on for a month, at least.”  _She'll need the extra food_ , he thinks,  _and it will give us all some time, to hunker down, to huddle around the newborn, and none of us will need to hunt._  “I should start taking your shifts.”  
  
That gets her to turn and face him, her jaw clenched stubbornly. “I won't sit around all day, freezing off fingers and toes, and letting you two do all the work. Equal shifts. That's what we agreed on.”  
  
Jaime nods. “We did.. five months ago.” His eyes drift to her midsection and he watches her grow uncomfortable and shifty and her hands clench, then unclench, as though she's trying to think of something to do with them. He feels traces of amusement rise in his chest. “But seeing as.. things  _progress_.. perhaps it would be smarter for you to remain here.” The wench opens her mouth to object, but he cuts in impatiently. “I wasn't done. I was going to say, you could collect the fire wood, or patch the drafts in those useless walls, cook what we have, anything.”  
  
“Like hunting,” says Brienne.  
  
“Not hunting,” Jaime counters, meeting her gaze and knowing instantly that wouldn't help him stand up to her. Framed around the deep blue, snowflakes stick to her eyelashes, making them more apparent, more girlish, set into a freckled face flushed cold – and though the ravish scars are uneven and ugly, and her profile broad, the swell of new teats and the familiarity of her lips stand out starkly to him. “I will hunt for us, from now on.”  
  
“I'm perfectly capable of hunting for myself.”  
  
“Fine then,” Jaime says. “I'll hunt for the little one.”  
  
“Pod doesn't–”  
  
“I wasn't talking about Podrick.”  
  
Brienne lapses into silence, staring hard at him. He smiles, with a lazy warmth. Jaime reaches out for her sword belt, but on habit it's still his right hand that goes for it, and he fumbles for a moment, before his left joins the right – Brienne's wide hand slips over both and guides them away, not unkindly. “I can take care of myself,  _and_  the baby,” she says.  
  
Her fingers remain resting lightly over the back of his hand and along the ring of his stump, a burning heat with the air so cold around them and he turns his hand over, closing the fingers around hers. “And what happens when it is only you and Podrick out on a hunt, and the baby feels an urge to join the two of you?”  
  
Brienne's eyes flick behind his back, toward the teenager in mention. Podrick works to gut the most recent catch, hunched over in concentration, brow furrowed. She is afraid to admit that she is terrified, knowing that these two are all she has, to get through this. And to think the Kingslayer would not even be there – her eyes flit down to his hand around hers, feeling the clumsy strength still in that limb... to think that he wouldn't be there, holding that hand, as she was lost in some unimaginable pain, trying to be a woman – in the only proper way she can be, she supposes – well, that's..  
  
“Perhaps, I will hunt closer. A shouting distance.” They can't hunt together, or let Pod go on his own, because who would watch their makeshift shelter? Any number of things could happen. A bear could stagger by, snuffing out their frozen supply of meat, stored underneath the coldest snowbank. Wolves could take up resident in the wind-free hut. Strangers or soldiers might happen by, find it useful and take to guarding it – and really, what could they do to take that abandoned, run-down stable back? A pregnant woman, a cripple, and a boy just shy of manhood? And one sword.  
  
“ _Perhaps_ ,” Jaime says, letting the word be heavy and drawn out. “I am right, and you should no longer hunt. I can track just as fine as you, wench. Podrick needs a break from doing all the dirty work..” and he leaves that end open, wondering if the wench would admit.  
  
As he's guessed, suspicions arise in her eyes. “I can kill an animal, just the same as him. I've killed men and there's not much of a difference.” With a jerk of her thumb she motions toward her cheek and Jaime nods solemnly — though there remains to be a trace of unwavering tease in his narrowing eyes.  
  
“Not the fawn, though,” he says. “Strange, that is.”  
  
They stare at each other, and finally, Brienne rips her hand away from his and rips off her gauntlets in violent movements, before shouldering by and calling at Podrick for the knife. Jaime turns on his heels to watch: Brienne tosses helm, gloves and ragged cloak into the snow, then hunches over the butchering crate, bare handed, receives the knife from Pod and yanks the blade across the last length of the fawn's downy pelt. Bloody, she flatten the hide – and Jaime notes that her face is a bit pale, paler than it was – and racks off any clinging clumps of fat or congealed bodily fluids. Flecks of crimson flick onto her clothes and jaw, as she works to butcher the meat. It's tough, from stewing in death for so long across the back of a horse and chilled, toughened, by the freezing cold. Her wrists complain at each sharp movement, and her spine is twice the complainer – an uncomfortable seething wind laces through her clothes as she works over the fawn, causing her to shiver, before she can suppress it.  
  
And if anything, Jaime is not as stubborn as her. He caves and moves to her side, and laughs in a quiet way. “Okay, you've proven your point.” He lays his left hand on her shoulder, but she jerks away, determined, and he watches her throat constrict and unconstrict, swallowing her gags.  
  
His fingers ghost down from her back to the neck, painting the barely seen rope burn scar – and Brienne's throat is soft – Jaime would think it was the softest skin she possessed, if he'd not once traced the delicate blue vein that ran the length of her inner thigh. She presses her lips together, before he feels the apple of her throat jump and she turns abruptly from him, retching.  
  
He smiles – he was right, after all – though there is concern in his eyes. “Don't like the sight of blood?” he asks.  
  
“It's the  _smell_ ,” she says. Shaking her head in dismay, peeking at the dismembered carcass, those sapphire eyes dance to Jaime – and they are lost, they are frustrated, they are scared. “It never bothered me before.. before..” her hands pass quickly, clumsily over her stomach, and she closes her eyes – but Jaime reaches out a hand, a little too hastily, and his thumb jabs her jaw, accomplishing the act of opening them again at least, as he wanted.  
  
Now that his hand is there, hovering over her damaged cheek, he does not know what to do with it. His eyes fly to the boy who mills about the horses – they usually try to keep their hands in check when around him, and that bugs him, somehow. It's like  _hiding_  it. Like Cersei and him used to have to. And if there's anything he's learned on late nights spent huddling from the keening frigid winds, it's that Brienne is nothing like his sister. He rests a warm palm briefly on her cheek, before dropping it lamely. Part of him wants to reach out and cradle the bulge of her abdomen, that Brienne seems so afraid of, but he can't – he doesn't know how, has never really cared to do that before. Cersei carried him three children, and he was never allowed to acknowledge them, or wonder at the miracle of his seed growing in her belly – he hardly saw her when she was heavy with child, and when he did, usually he was too caught up in her face and the thing between her legs, than what lay beneath her shirt. That had been fine with him, same as when they were born and he'd not been allowed near...  
  
Here, with Brienne there has not been a step that he has missed. From the moment she came to him, wide-eyed, pale, but blunt and honest, carrying news and something else in her womb, to the first onslaught of symptoms, to the day her armor no longer fit and him and Pod were forced to find an alternative – even the gritty bits, where Brienne lapsed into a three day silence, refusing to acknowledge both men. At that point he'd thought she  _hated_  him; it seemed logical, if he were a wench, who'd given his maidenhead to the Kingslayer, only to find out he's carrying the man's illegitimate child, well it wouldn't  _enthuse_  him. Except, the wench didn't hate him, rather, he realized that she was merely frightened out of her wits.  
  
He can't say he isn't either; fretting constantly, wondering when the time will come, when his and Podrick's midwife skills will be put to the test. They'd tried to find someone, a woman, a real midwife, but all they'd found was an old man, who'd once had a wife, and that told them bits and pieces of helpful tips – before he died in the night of a fever. Sometimes Jaime found himself repeating the list of what to do in the back of his mind as he went about his mundane tasks of surviving;  _keep calm, make her breath, wash hands, bucket of water, keep calm, breathe, have her push, cut cord, pat its back, don't faint, and above all, keep calm._  
  
 _Like now_ , Jaime thinks, the ghost of his right hand wrapping into a fist. She is still meeting his gaze, and she is not able to hide her own fear – their twin fear. But he is the Kingslayer, and she is his wench, Brienne the Beauty, and if they can survive Harrenhal, the Bloody Murmurs, and the north's brutality, together, why not this?  
  
Maybe it's time they put the smell of blood behind them.  
  
Jaime reaches out his left hand and Brienne stiffens – he's never tried before. When they curl up under the furs in their dingy corner, his hand will touch her everywhere, but skim around her stomach, and usually there are only passing touches out in the open daylight – so he can not let her faltering walls discourage him.  
  
Timidly, at first, his fingertips trace the side of the baby bump, and then the hand unfolds across the fabric, hugging the curve, and his head lifts slightly to meet her inquiring eyes. “It's not gonna kick me, is it?”  _She might_ , he thinks, the corner of his mouth tugging at the prospect.  
  
“No.” Her lips barely move to frame the word.  
  
Jaime's eyes catch on the gleam of a ruby at her hip, and it somehow sends a million different scattering memories of Lannister crimson spreading through his mind; Cersei, in all her finery, on her wedding day to Robert Baratheon, his lord father sitting beneath a banner of a lion on its back paws, the sight of the Iron Throne room hung with Lannister colors, Tommen's crown of garnets, the rivulets of crimson slipping down the golden sword, pressed against Aery's throat... countless tourneys, childhood memories, incoherent, but real, graspable, full of a sharp, bitter tang of a life that was.. the War of Five Kings, Catelyn Tully's wine offering on the night of his escape.. that blossom of scarlet on the wench's thigh, on the last proper sword fight of his life.. so many others, hundreds, splattered in blood, red and dark and unfortunate, poisoned.. tainted in that omnipresent game of thrones, full of lies and manipulations and oaths.. and honors lost..  
  
He hates the color, suddenly, and he reaches for the sword at her hip – it is Oathkeeper, brilliant and of the best craftsmanship, Valyrian steel, to be sure, but he can not think any use of it here, in their quiet glade, with the promise of new things, budding in more than one place, and so he pulls the blade from the sheathe, examines it critically in the pale afternoon, then flings it into a snow bank.  
  
Brienne opens her mouth to speak objection, and Jaime catches the words with his own. He slings his stump around her back and pulls her into him, bending up and around the bulge, and ignoring the bite of the cold metal that is the remains of her worn armor, and revels in the feel of her familiar mouth on his – the vulnerable, warm, heavy pieces of her stomach and tender breasts resting against his chest and abdomen – the soft spots now shown beyond walls once built so solidly, so firmly laced into place with oaths and honors..

Because there is no need for any of that, there, in their unkept little stable house, surrounded by an unfamiliar, silent woods, and absolutely no reason not to be giddy at the prospect of a simple, domestic life, together.


End file.
